Key Verse: 1 Chronicles 5:25
And they were unfaithful to the God of their fathers, and played the harlot after the gods of the peoples of the land, whom God had destroyed before them.

“Unfaithful!” To be full of faith is to be true to God in every aspect of our lives. No compromise with anything that would draw us away from God. Today’s reading shows us that even though we are not always faithful, when we are in trouble, we can still call upon the Lord in earnest prayer, and He will step in as we invite Him to do so. Chapter 5:20b tells us that, “They cried out to God in the battle. He heeded their prayer, because they put their trust in Him.” Imagine, they captured 50,000 camels, along with other live stock. God remains faithful!

In Chapter six we learn of the importance of “the service of song in the house of the Lord.” In Psalm 100:2 we are told to “serve the Lord with gladness; come before Him with joyful singing.” Just a few days ago in our reading in Ephesians 5:18-19, we were told to “be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with our hearts to the Lord.” This is important to God. Therefore, it should be important to us!

PRAYER FOR TODAY:
Thank You, Lord, for hearing and answering the prayers I offer to You each day. I cry out to You in the heat of the battle, and also when all is at peace. Please give me more grace so that I may be constantly faithful to You. I make melody with my heart to You! This is a time for singing and music. Amen!

100 PERSONAL WORDS:
I find that the thoughts that come to my mind (I confess to wandering thoughts in these chapters with so many hard-to-pronounce names) are, as they say, “off the wall.” When I read about the tribe of Gad (5:11), I thought of my minister when I was 6 or 7. His name was Rev. Stuart Woodland. My Dad was away because of the war, and the minister felt some responsibility to do what he could to help my mother to raise me well. He would threaten me by saying, “David, you be a good boy or I’ll take the gad to you.” I never found out for sure what a “gad” was, nor did I want to know. There was a twinkle in Rev. Woodland’s eye when he said this, but I still took him seriously. I did learn well from the Bible stories we read every day that God does send punishment for wrongdoing. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Psalm 111:10a).

One of my favourite scenes in Journey to Christmas, a Crossroads documentary production, is when our travellers rode the camels through the desert, experienced a sand storm, and spent the night in a Bedouin tent. Click here for a taste of life as it may have been back in the days of 1st Chronicles.

Yours for continuing to read and learn, in spite of 1,000+ strange names,

David

Image:
A Camel from Petra, Jordan, ready and waiting to give tourists a ride through history…